The Pants of Freedom

America in 2008 is a great place to live because I can wear pants. That's right. Be they tight, loose, sweat material, or pleather. I can wear them all. This is one of the freedoms that not only makes me inordinately happy that I was born in this day and age, but that I was born in this country. I've heard that they have pants elsewhere. And indubitably they do. Though not everywhere. At least, they are not everywhere accessible to women.

Getting lost in the problems of the big picture can distort our reality. Shape it into something negative. Finding joy in the small can reinstate our faith in today. We are free in so many uplifting ways. I don't have to wear twenty pounds of undergarments to be socially acceptable. Can choose from a world's worth of food variety within the vicinity of my home. Can look the way I choose, and as we live in a PC world, no one can be mean to me, because I'll just sue them. Sweat material is in now so I can go for as long as I want without putting on real clothes. 

I am blessed with the ability to order over a hundred different types of coffee drinks, fried foods, and varieties of slurpy. I can walk down the street without ever worrying about being stoned. I'll takes annoying hoots and hollers from construction workers over that any day. If my date is a jerk I can throw a glass of water in his face, pretending like I'm in the movies. Or show affection in public. For that matter, I can show my face in public. 

Seemingly unimportant freedoms have merit. Add up to create a greater landscape of freedom. It does not stop at these. In the words of Peter, Paul, and Mary (and other folk artists since they all seem to sing the same songs) "Let freedom ring". I would add, and let it grow. Freedom is not stagnant - it should forever be increasing. So speak up when you see it contract and open it back up. Nurture freedom and one another. Revel in your good luck. Wear pants.

The Futility of Arguing Bias

Spin goes both ways. There are brilliant contortion artists on both sides. Though this may come as a shock, the same source can be used to prove either a liberal or conservative bias. The other day my intelligence was insulted when a liberal happy peer of mine told me, with the indignation and certainty that only young people are capable of, that the film the 300 was clear proof of a conservative bias that has crept into historically liberal Hollywood. This jumping off point will serve as my "proof" that you can use the same source to prove two opposing ideologies. 

As you may not be familiar with the film, I will illustrate the scene and then make my point. Dramatically opening, sans credits, with a dutch style forced perspective shot of a bed of skulls a voice over informs the viewer that the Spartans (the heroes of the film) inspect every male newborn. If the child is deformed or weak, he is cast over the cliff to sure demise. A warrior nation cannot have weak links. Well, the film is clearly promoting abortion, specifically partial birth abortion (something that any doctor will tell you does not exist, but which Ann Coulter will adamantly say does). Only at this state of development (already on the way out), could a mother know that her child was deformed, or in some way not satisfactory. The opening scene validates the barbaric, immoral practice of playing God in determining a baby's right to life.

Now, let's be liberal. Faced with what he considers an imminent threat, the Spartan king overrides Sparta's senate by mobilizing an army and marching on the Persians. Sound familiar? The Spartan king is Bush (no, duh?). He decided, based on false evidence, such as the claim that British intelligence and our own intelligence believed that Sudam Heussien had secured uranium or, my favorite, that our enemies are "evil", to go to war without the backing of the United Nations. The 300 promotes a warhawk ruler's right to toss democracy to the wayside for what he believes is right. Ruler knows best.

Schizophrenic shift - conservative time. To garner support for her husband's war efforts the queen offers herself to a senate leader. Morality flouter. Blinded by their cult-like dedication to Clinton, liberals have to condone any sexual promiscuity. Even worse, when accused of her act in the senate, she denies it! Well, kind of. Evasive response to direct questions seem to cut it for liberals. 

Liberal. After a treacherous mountain jaunt, the Spartan 300 arrive at the Hot Gates. Here they will makes their initial stand against the Persians. And wouldn't you know, the Persians show up with turbans, "unchristian" piercings, and dark skin! The enemy is comprised souly of blacks and arabs. I find it suspicious too. We all know that the Republicans are racists who hate the blacks and are just biding their time until they can reinstate segregation or polish them off by arming every white toddler. And don't even get me started about the Arabs. Conservative hatred for Arabs is on its way to reinstating the camp system utilized to round up the Japanese in world war two. I could continue, but you get the point. I'd like to mention that the film is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 (and don't even get me started on how comic books are warping our youth, causing mass violence and dementia), which is based on an ancient legend (reminder, legends are exaggerated versions of real events). So some, probably slightly less glorious, version of he story actually happened. Spartans fought Persians. Now I could be wrong, but I'm guessing they had no idea that one day, way, way off in the future, there would be a country called the United States who would be at war with people in the Middle East. They were not fighting so that we could mutilate their story. To say that that story was articulated to support any partisan position is preposterous. So is the obsession with bias.  

In the Now

Nostalgia is so tempting, so comforting to sink into. It has already happened. There are no unexpected twists or turns. Even bad moments distort into something safe. That's the danger. The present will never be as the past. The future will never be as this moment. All life is change. Idolizing some past version of ourselves, of our lives, stunts forward progression. Creates an image that can never again be achieved. Life was so good then .... I looked so good then ... these are dangerous utterances. Life will be good again. But it will be so in a different way. No two moments exist as clones. Both backward and forward looking remove us from the now. Show times that can never again exist, build scenarios and thus expectations for times that have not yet come. Goals are positive to have, but when a future life is constructed so that if it does not end up being built to exact prior specifications happiness is unobtainable, then happiness will be unobtainable. So live in the moment. Take the associated risks. Create a wonderful future without thinking about it. Just do it by living the now to the fullest. Go get 'em.

The Apocalypse Will Not Come From Without, But From Within

Do you ever wonder if we fantasize in film and fiction about the apocalypse from without because we know that it will come from within? All responsibility is removed if some alien nation or natural disaster is the cause of our demise. We should be so lucky for such an end. But we will not be so absolved. 

To be sure global warming poses a threat to the survival of this planet, and thus by extension ourselves. But that's not what I want to talk about. It is the insidious, the small, that eats at us. The unapparent plagues. We are a diseased world for which the only cure is ourselves. Our oppressor and savior. We destroy ourselves a little every day by negligence and short term views. It is as Neitzsche said, "Man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture chamber, an unsafe and hazardeous wilderness - this fool, this prisoner, consumed with longing and despair, became the inventor of bad conscience." We've got a lot of that today, bad conscience. 

 Our greatest oppressor is our link to the material, the external. Inherent in this is the danger that if that outside element by which we define ourselves disappears, we have nothing. No way to define ourselves. If I am beautiful, and allow that to dictate my interactions, serve as a measure of my self worth, I am left with nothing at the end of the day. Beauty fades. Either in the long run with age, or in a split second in a car crash. Vanity may build as a by product for it is nothing more than fear of losing beauty. I become so afraid that beauty will vanish that I become consumed by it, translating as an obsession with my own looks. The origin of bad thoughts is fear and we live in a culture of fear. Inescapable fear. Not even the line at the grocery store is safe.

If freedom is the freedom from harm, then we are not free at all. Post Freud I think we all agree that harm does not have to be bodily. Screaming at you as you stand, innocently in the grocery store line are at least 20 magazines, more than 2/3 of those present preaching of weight loss plans, how so and so lost x amount, the new diet. It's nauseating. I almost become compelled to leave my cart and run for the fresh air outside - there's my diet plan. 

I'm focusing for the moment on looks because I find it to be one of our more insidious attachments to the exterior. Without even realizing it can creep up on you. One day you might wake up and realize how it has begun to define your relationships. How many of the interactions you have happen because you're attractive. At that moment fear overcomes you. What if it were suddenly gone? How do I detach from it? Who could I really count on to be there if I didn't look like this? Would I be a better person? Would I be a happier, healthier person? Just look at the things that we do to ourselves: surgery, eating disorders, dyes. How can the person not get lost in that jumble. 

This disease is the culmination of our achievement. It is the torture chamber that we have created for ourselves because our energies are no longer focused on pure survival. Somehow it is hard to imagine people's of the third world worrying if their food is nonfat, or taking out the only tiny loan they can get, which could allow them t create a new life, and spend it on breasts. No, the heart of this disease is the property of "developed" nations. As always, I think we need a little change in diction here. 

We are handcuffed to far more in the exterior than just looks - there's money (fear of it's loss or lack of leads to greed, which leads to ... and so it goes), objects, success. These all cut us off from happiness. They are hinderers. Road blocks. As the Dali Lama says, the ultimate goal is happiness. When we are happy it doesn't matter if our breasts are smaller than some super model, if we aren't as thin as someone else, or as tall and muscular (yes, this conversation includes men - they get surgical enhancements to, such as calf and peck enlargers). It is easy to get lost in the fray, in the jungle of advertisements, media, drug companies that tell us we are not as we should be, we are not the ultimate versions of ourselves. The only problem is that this "ultimate version" has everything but a soul. Women, it is no longer the men who are turning us into Stepford wives - we're doing it to ourselves. If you think that you need to do that in order to find love, then let me tell you, there is no real love at the end of that journey. 

We are a nation that promotes individualism - believes in personal responsibility. I will not argue that it is partly the fault of each of us who let this culture tear us down, that let ourselves become unkind, self-involved people. It is also the fault of the individuals who hold the positions that create a culture of fear for their compatriots. But the fault goes beyond the individual. To the first group - a lifetime of 3,000 advertisements a day all telling you that you need something, aren't good enough, should be like this, wear a person down. They distract them from the real. To the second, people need jobs and may not yet be at a personal point of realization that would allow them to have the ideals to quit their job. So it is to us as a society that the responsibility falls. We must limit corporations - really examine what freedom means, and not allow them to impede ours. You may here argue that the corporation also has the right to be free. It doesn't. In no case does something, a non-living entity, have a right greater than people, than individuals. A corporation is not an individual, whatever the legal jargon may say. It does not feel, breathe, or have morals. It's interests never, and I mean never, outweigh those of real people. 

We can't do anything about some unforeseen (well by all of us but a select few) alien invasion that wipes us out. We can do something about our own annihilation. Annihilation of body and spirit. We are obsessed with what we aren't, not with what we are. Let's change that.

Age of the Female Action Hero

Is female power really female progress? Barbarella has become Tomb Raider - the damsel in distress, the rescuer. But is this new role for women in our society's imagination a step in the right direction? Or, is it ingraining a new, unattainable image for women?

As a comic book , video game, action film loving, adventurous, 23 year old woman Tomb Raider, Witchblade, Aeon Flux and their accompanying femmes of action are my role models, women I aspire to be like. They are ideal women - but who's ideal? Granted they represent certain traits which are positive to aspire to. They are smart, independent, brave, unshakeable in their resolve, but ... But part and parcel to these traits they are all big chested, perfectly proportioned (using barbie as our basis), clear skinned, wide eyed, outfitted in reality defying skin tight clothing, and mysteriously always shaved (I'd like someone to tell me how to achieve this when out in the wilderness or on mission, without a shower or time for days on end). They are the embodiment of the male ideal. Often they are created by men. So, where's the female power?

Don't get me wrong, I am no crunchy granola advocate. I like to shave, shower, and look sexy. But I am perturbed by this image, mostly because I am not perturbed at all. When I draw female characters for my comic books, guess what they look like - amazons of male ideal perfection. Embarrassing as it is to admit, I even went through a phase of translating this look into my reality during a phase of dressing like Tomb Raider. I perpetuate this female power image.

So, what is the true embodiment of female power. How do we perpetuate it? Is it Demi Moore in G.I. Jane wit her buffed up body and shaved head? Seeing as many men I know don't like this movie, perhaps. On the other hand, has she crossed the line and made female power come to mean being more male? Her commanding moment is linked to acting as if she were a man when she rejoins, "Suck my dick." Now that's not very lady like.

Female power seems to be expressed in the popular culture in two primary ways - woman as the seductress or as the sexy action hero, who may often posses some of the traits of the first. Key to both concepts is the ability to control men, either sexually or physically. Ironically (or not) these characters most often arise from the imaginations of men. Whether expressions of fantasy or fear they are indicative of the male, not female drive. Domination may mean "power" but it does not necessitate empowerment. 

These iconic representations are so alive in our psyches that it is difficult to separate ourselves from them. They limit our imagination. Pigeon-hold us, making it a constant struggle to come to any meaningful conclusions about what female power, or empowerment, really is. The modern female action hero seems like such a step up from the damsel in distress that it's hard not to grab and hold tightly onto this image. 

Until we are willing to absolve ourselves of the Victorian misconception of women as men as opposites, it will be hard, if not impossible, to imagine a satisfactory concept of female power / empowerment. Now, women (and men for that matter) are characterized as having either male or female traits, as opposed to having traits which exist independent of the notion of gender. A woman is like a man (or a bitch, a term so lovingly used for strong women) if she is hard-headed, aggressive and commanding (i.e. Hillary Clinton). A man is effeminate if he prefers decorating (or the nesting trait usually ascribed to females) to take-overs. This limited form of explaining and thus understanding ourselves is unsatisfactory. Before we can move our collective consciousness forward we must remedy this cage of opposites, finding a new vocabulary. 

Amendment:

To note there may be a female character out there that somewhat passes muster for female empowerment ... "Starbuck" from Battlestar Galactica... she kcks ass in a very unique way.

When the Metaphor Becomes the Truth

Thought is defined by language - its limits and connotations. Recall the insidious goal of Orwell's Newspeak - cut down language and you confine the realm of possibilities. Today this is a poignant lesson to look back on. Our perspectives, beliefs, assumptions are defined by the metaphors that construct our reality.

Right now our realm of thought is limited by diction lodged in the 19th Century, Machiavellian word smithing, a general disinterest by a large segment if the population in the finer points of linguistics, and an obsession with the sound bite. Truths that we now hold to be self-evident are no more than ingrained metaphors. Through repetition they have become the truth. We are the victims of metaphor and, "the victim not only has a special view of the world but regards it as the only view, or rather, he confuses a special view of the world with the world... He has mistaken the mask for the face." (The Myth of Metaphor; Colin Murray Turbayne). Lodged in our collective psyches is the notion that the world is a machine, a mechanism. This concept harkens back to the 19th Century, yet with all of our supposed progress will not be shook off. The perception of the world as a machine alters our perception of and thus interaction with the world. It explains why we feel righteous using it for industry. It is a cold, soulless entity. Consider for a moment what would happen if we changed the metaphor. Instead of earth as machine, earth as living organism. A new relationship is formed. A damaged machine may be repaired, rebuilt, but a living organism can only be hurt so much before it dies. 

Perhaps you would recount to this notion that it is simply word play. The change in one metaphor couldn't possibly change the world. A metaphorical shift doesn't change the facts. Or does it? Facts are far less engraved in stone than we generally admit. Indeed, "a change in attitudes to the facts," as affected by a change in metaphor, "can even issue a change in fact." (The Myth of Metaphor; Colin Murray Turbane). 

Words cannot be taken at face value. They must be scrutinized. We are surrounded by metaphors that, over time, have been translated into fact. This does not make them true. So, the next time you flip on the news, or hear a politician speak of freedom, take a closer look at what all the words and phrases mean. I think you'll find that the surface meaning is in fact far from the true connotation. 

It's the Candidate All Over Again

Achieving power for power's sake leads to nothing. To this end it would behoove the present Republican Party to re-watch the Candidate. Much like the neo-cons of today, a candidate (any candidate) is selected and put into the framework of proper spin. By mastering the airwaves and doing a little clever word-smithing, the candidate's campaign is won ... but as the famous last words of the movie go - "Now what?" That's the problem. The entire fight was about winning the election. So done, the goal has been reached. A vast emptiness extends beyond. The goal of power with no meaningful post-win goals is vacuous. 

But I guess I'm being unfair. The Republican Party does have some goals; slash taxes as our national debt exponentially expands, return $300 to each citizen (aren't you all excited?), increase the military industrial complex, completely denigrate and destroy the environment (because, guess what, global warming doesn't exist until it becomes profitable for the oil industry and big business, or until plants won't grow and acid rain eats away at our skin ... okay, that's a bit overdramatic), and, my personal favorite - promote freedom (who's freedom?). Unfortunately for us, these are not long term agendas. They are not sustainable models.

Such fanfare serves as a successful campaign for power strategy because they apply to society's short term mentality. I get $300 today - awesome! This is a much simpler concept than figuring out how much I - directly or indirectly - will lose based on the overall fiscal plan. A platform that says we don't all have to switch to low flush toilettes (a particular pet peeve of right wing journalist Ann Coulter), use less (of anything), stop using plastic bags (thank you to the stores who have started to charge for these and offer reusable bags for a small fee), or in any other way change our everyday lives is an easy one to get behind. The long term plan which call for us to alter out lives NOW, is much harder to sell. Basically, in order to "win", the Republican Party has chosen the path of least resistance, or of the "easy sell".

The real platform of the far right wing (which has now taken over the GOP) is quite simple. It is twofold; discredit the democratic party and (beginning with Nixon in the 1970's and carried through to today) to take over the main stage of the media arena under the banner of equity. At any cost. When you don't have to make hard sells, have the illusion of morality behind you, don't adhere to the standards to which you hold others, don't feel obligated to use accurate facts, and have the monied interests of America behind you, it's not all that hard to gain power.

But I fall pray to the same culture of complaint that has allowed the right wing take over. Griping can only ever scratch the surface - touch on the superficial. It supports the current state of politics - again, takes the path of least resistance. The war of rhetoric will never achieve positive change. So we must dig. Real change comes not from maneuvering within the system (though knowledge of the system is important), but from breaking free of it - standing outside the box (not to be cliched) and looking beyond. You may get an advantage on the chess board, but you're still stuck on one ideological plane.

Don't get trapped in the epic fight between Republicans and Democrats (which is really more of a slaughter). This battle shouldn't even exist. If you have only two sides you're bound to get a fight. There will always be victim and victimizer. It seems to have slipped the American people's minds that we do not, constitutionally speaking, have a two party system. George Washington, in his farewell address even warned of the dangers of falling pray to a two party system.

Media has not only fallen short in the accurate reporting department (especially those elements taken over by right wingers), but it has propagated the two party system. Most explicitly this is apparent in the televised presidential debates where only the Republican and Democrats nominees have the floor.

So let's start looking past the hoopla, past the campaign. Candidates, parties, how about running not to win, but to change this country in the right direction.